The Great Red Dragon Paintings are a series of watercolour paintings by the Englishpoet and painterWilliam Blake, painted between 1805 and 1810.[1] It was during this period that Blake was commissioned to create over a hundred paintings intended to illustrate books of the Bible. These paintings depict 'The Great Red Dragon' in various scenes from the Book of Revelation.

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And behold a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads. And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth.

The character of the Great Red Dragon plays a prominent role in Thomas Harris' novel Red Dragon and its film adaptations, Manhunter and Red Dragon, in which the primary antagonist Francis Dolarhyde has an obsession with the painting. Dolarhyde is fixated with the strength and power he thinks the dragon exudes, so he takes up bodybuilding and, by the events of the novel, he is described as being able to clean and jerk, 300 lbs, meaning he is physically very powerful, and in his mind, like the dragon. He also has a giant tattoo of the dragon etched onto his back. Thomas Harris makes an error in citing The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with the Sun as the object of Dolarhyde's fixation while describing The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed in Sun, specifically the Dragon's tail wrapping around the woman, a detail specifically accurate of the "in" painting. As well, Harris refers to the "with" painting as having been loaned by the Brooklyn Museum for a Blake retrospective at the Tate[6]—the "in" painting is the version held by the Brooklyn Museum. Note, however, that the Brooklyn Museum's own website shows the "in" painting, but labels it "with",[7] so perhaps the error is the Museum's and not Harris'. Manhunter shows the "with" painting as named in Harris' book, and has the front-facing Dragon from that painting tattooed on Dolarhyde's chest, whereas Red Dragon uses "in" as described by Harris along with the back and leg tattoos.